


may you grow up to be righteous (may you grow up to be true)

by goodboots



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Rock Band, Gen, R Plus L Equals J
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-26
Updated: 2019-05-26
Packaged: 2020-02-26 16:30:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18720793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goodboots/pseuds/goodboots
Summary: Years later, the Stark kids get the band back together.





	may you grow up to be righteous (may you grow up to be true)

**Author's Note:**

> What's up, fanfiction?! I'm back, I'm writing, and here are 9K words of band AU for Game of Thrones / Song of Ice and Fire that no one has asked for, or indeed, even wants. 
> 
> Please presume a close-to-canon backstory, except instead of war and politics, they're musicians. (Also, Daenerys makes a brief appearance, but she's unrelated to Jon).

Arya likes to tell people that she’s a high school drop-out because saying it that way sounds very rock-and-roll. Jimi Hendrix dropped out. Janis Joplin dropped out. Mick Jagger dropped out. (None of these people are her particular idols, but she’d be in good company with them). Besides that, it’s kind of true: she stopped going to classes the day after her fourteenth birthday because Catelyn finally stopped fighting her on it.

But she’s always careful not to say it within earshot of Sansa, who will only roll her eyes and say “It’s not  _dropping out_ if Dad hires you a tutor. It’s homeschooling, you nitwit.”

Fine, technically Arya got her GED under Syrio Forel’s watchful eye, but that’s it for her, she’s done. She’s not going to college. Her brothers and sister all went, at least for a little while (Robb’s the only one who actually graduated), but there’s nobody left alive to make sure she applies. Her parents are dead, her siblings all scattered to different corners of the continent. For someone who’s spent her entire life in the public eye, she’s suddenly quite alone in the world.

Ned Stark was stabbed to death on stage during a show at Sept of Baelor three years ago, in what _Spin Magazine_ called “the single most gruesome public event in the history of modern music.” Then, eighteen months later, Catelyn Stark collapsed at the Red Wedding Festival, right in the middle of her encore performance of  _Rains of Castamere_ ; the doctors said she’d had a heart attack, and they said that she didn’t suffer.

Arya’s pretty sure they were lying. 

In the span of a year and a half, the six Stark kids went from being famous rock star progeny to being infamous rock star orphans.

 _Of course_ Arya Stark isn’t going to college: she’s going on tour. 

# 

The day after Cat’s funeral, the whole stupid boat-and-fire affair they insisted on down in Riverrun, she had climbed out the window of the guest room she was sharing with Bran.

The Tully house was stupidly large, but her mother’s family were simple people, and they were lacking in security. 

“Don’t do anything stupid,” he’d said when the floorboards creaked under her footsteps, but didn’t open his eyes to say it. 

#

She goes south first, to Dorne, but it’s too familiar; they all came here for holidays when she was small, during those rare occasions when her mother finally got fed up with the snow and wind and bundled them all onto a train to the coast.

She walks past the restaurant where her Dad got mobbed for autographs by local fishermen and has a brilliant clear memory of his laugh, and she’s so angry she has to sit down on the boardwalk, dizzy with rage.

“I think I want to kill somebody,” she tells Sandor over the crackly connection. (She’s way out of her network; Dorne may as well be Mars as far as AT&T is concerned).

She’s been saying this for years, these weak murderous threats, but she means it, she saw her mother’s body in the casket and she really means it now. But her bodyguard is difficult to rattle, and he’s heard all of it before.

“Don’t kill anybody there,” the Hound advises calmly, “save your anger for the people who deserve it.”

See, this is why she called him: Robb would have called the police, and Sansa would have started crying. Jon would know what she means, and how much she means it, but he never answers his phone.  

#

Dorne is a bust, so she gets on a ship bound for Pentos, and things are better there. The air is more humid, the coins and bills are unfamiliar, they speak a dozen languages and she doesn’t know any of them. It’s too unfamiliar to remind her of anything at all.

After a few weeks of sleeping late and wandering around in the evenings, she actually picks up her guitar. 

She traipses around Essos for a while, plays a few gigs with the Faceless Men, who aren’t so much a band as a collective of eccentric performance artists. It helps to refine her sound. 

By the time she splits off from them, she’s started doing a solo act under the name A Girl is No One, but she’s still not a singer. She can sing just fine, but she’ll never wow audiences like her parents and sister; she does all right on a guitar, but she’s always secretly preferred percussion. Maybe she just likes to hit things.

#

Ned raised his kids to be fair, level-headed, and straightforward.

He absolutely did not raise them to be musicians. That part was an accident.

Arya’s first clear memory is of balancing on one of her brother’s knees and banging away at a drum kit, with Sansa warbling some melody in the background. (Catelyn always said that Sansa could sing before she could talk, which Arya thinks might be why even grown she can carry a tune but not a conversation).

And there’s that Annie Leibovitz photo of Robb at fifteen years old that was printed in Rolling Stone, captioned “the boy who would be king.” He’s holding Ice in the picture, and any time Arya sees it—reprinted constantly in the articles about Ned’s murder—she thinks he must have begged to have it for the photoshoot because none of them were ever allowed to mess around with dad’s favourite guitar.  

Robb and Jon and Sansa and Arya were raised on the road, though Winterfell had mostly stopped touring by the time Rickon was old enough to walk.

There’s history here. There’s an expectation: what will they do next? 

She doesn’t know, and she’s done being Arya Stark for the time being. She’ll do whatever she likes.  

#

She calls Jon from a payphone in Braavos, and after he gives her the third degree for being out of touch for a month, they nearly manage to have a conversation. 

“Hey,” she says, “do you ever regret not talking to them more?”

He sighs down the line, but she’s not discouraged—any conversation with Jon is 40% sighing. 

“With Mom, I do. Feels like we never got anywhere productive, just sniping at each other. Dad and I talked plenty, though not about—“

“—yeah,” she finishes for him. “I know. Shit, sorry, that was insensitive.”

He tells her not to worry about it, so she tries not to. 

 #

Ned died just before Arya’s fifteenth birthday when Sansa’s homicidal ex-fiancé stabbed him on stage during a Winterfell show. It was their first headlining gig in eighteen months; Arya remembers Robb calling it a “comeback tour,” and Ned laughing and asking what he was supposed to be coming back from, they’d never gone anywhere?

Jon was on tour with the Night’s Watch during both events, because that band was always on fucking tour. He showed up for Ned’s funeral fresh off the plane from Valyria, and cried for two straight days, angry silent tears that none of them will ever mention. He took it the hardest of any of them, and she thinks it’s because he never got any solid answers out of Ned; he’d missed his chance.

Robb quit music, started medical school, and surprise married his surprise girlfriend that none of his siblings had ever even met. 

Jon toured too much, slept too little, tried to write songs and didn’t show them to anybody. At some point—Arya isn’t too clear on when, and Jon is terrible at telling stories in any kind of linear fashion—he up and quit the Night’s Watch, which means he definitely had some kind of break from reality and decide to torch his life’s work. 

Sansa disappeared to the Vale, where Peter Baelish went all Svengali on her and tried to turn her into the next Demi Lovato, which didn’t turn out so well for him because Sansa is absolutely the next something, but no one is quite sure who yet. There are fanzines and blogs that run entirely on avid guesswork, trying to predict her next move.

Arya left the country and didn’t tell her siblings she was going until she’d crossed the Narrow Sea

Probably Bran and Rickon each had their own abrupt, catastrophic adjustment periods, but they were going to be under Brienne’s care until they turn eighteen, so at least they have one stable adult around to manage that.

Also, Rickon was only seven when Ned died; Arya thinks there’s a decent chance he’ll turn out the best-adjusted of any of them. 

#

She takes a five-day train from Braavos to Yunkai, where in short order she loses her wallet, loses her backpack, gets in a bar fight, and makes friends with a bunch of students who are drinking the single worst-tasting alcohol Arya’s ever encountered. She does six shots and gets into a second fight. 

One of the students lets her crash on the couch in their dorm room for the week, and she spends her days busking in the old city square for all the tourists, who take her for a local. Nobody recognizes her.

At night, she hangs around the campus, exchanges basic pleasantries in a language she can barely speak with kids who are all older than her but just seem so young. A week turns into a month and she thinks about enrolling in classes, maybe changing her name, but then she encounters another busker—he’s got a violin, and he’s playing one of her mother’s old hits—and she gives up that idea pretty quick. They manage a couple of duets before he packs up and moves along. He gives her his email address and says to look him up if she's ever back in Westeros. 

She makes enough cash to buy a ferry ticket and tries her luck in Valyria instead. 

 # 

In Valyria, she sleeps for three days straight, breaks up a fight, learns a smattering of Old Valyrian, hears an outlandish story about dragons that she will always secretly believe is true, climbs to the top of the volcano, and writes six songs. 

After six weeks, she finds an internet cafe and emails Robb, who tells her Sansa’s left the empty Lannister enclave in King’s Landing and finally moved home.

 #

Sansa was a pop princess for about twenty minutes. This occurred between her guest-star arc on a middling Nickelodeon TV show—a role she accepted while both her parents were still living and against Ned’s wishes (“You don’t want to turn out like that Miley girl,” he warned, unaware that that Miley girl would eventually become Sansa’s dedicated weed connection)—and her current situation as an embittered shut-in plotting murder.

As Arya understood it, she left King’s Landing in a mad dash across state lines.

Jon had met her by chance on the porch of Ned and Caitlyn’s shuttered house, where he sometimes crashed when he was in town between touring with the Watch, asked what had happened and wasn’t she supposed to be in KL right now?

He asked because she’d lasted a good eighteen months after Cat’s death before having a public breakdown, which is a family record.

“Shut up and help me,” she’d answered, hefting one of her seven overstuffed suitcases over the threshold. It was snowing heavily, still midwinter, and Sansa hadn’t seen any of her siblings in over a year. Months afterward, she admitted to Arya that Jon wasn’t the one she would’ve picked to greet her at the house, but it was nice to have the company.

Later, drinking shitty beer in the kitchen, Jon asked again.

“Petyr Baelish is going to try to sue me for breach of contract,” she’d said, which still wasn’t an answer.

“Because of Joffrey?” Jon had asked, brows knit together in confusion. Joffrey and Sansa had originally been signed to the label as a double act, and Sansa had remained with her manager even after that planned record went up in flames.

“No,” Sansa replied, exasperated. “Because I’m not his Taylor Swift clone, and I’m not making another album for him.” She’d taken a swig of her beer and then added, in a lower tone, “And because I stabbed him with a pair of sewing scissors. Do you still have the number for Dad’s lawyer?”

# 

Also in Valyria, Arya meets a Stone Man in a leper colony and hears another two outlandish legends.

She sleeps under a clear sky and thinks about what she’s going to do to fix all of this. She thinks about going back.

#

She comes home on a bright, bleak Tuesday morning, just as the leaves are changing colour.

“Home” is a relative term, because Ned and Catelyn’s house up in the hills is shuttered and full of boxes, so she takes an Uber from the airport and shows up at Sansa’s shitty hipster loft with her duffel bag and a box of fresh lemon cakes from that one really good bakery off the high street. 

“Oh, good, you’re not dead,” Sansa deadpans, opening the front door before Arya’s even knocked. 

She’s in a tracksuit, hair pulled back into a high bun, face bare. She looks—different. She’s still too thin, but she’s gotten rid of that fashionable, brittle, birdlike look she tried to cultivate when she lived with the Lannisters.

“No security?” Arya says. That seems like a bad idea, given their family’s talent for attracting both attention and violence. 

“Please,” Sansa scoffs, stepping back so Arya can enter. “I saw you on the camera and told the concierge to buzz you in, I’m not insane.” 

That’s debatable, based on all Arya’s read in the press over the last year, but she decides to let that one go. She kicks off her Doc Martens and slides on socking feet into the living room.

“I like what you’ve done with the place,” Arya says, giving it a critical once-over. The concrete walls are bare except for where Sansa’s spray-painted ‘fight me’ in two-foot-high black lettering on the eastern wall. “Is that instructions for visitors?”

“Title of the next album,” Sansa sniffs, opening the pastry box. “If that ever happens. Sit down, you’re being rude.”

They eat the lemon cakes on the pink velvet sofa, and Sansa recounts the past eleven months of her life. Arya knows most of it from TMZ and Perez Hilton, but listens politely, and even remembers not to wipe her sticky hands on the upholstery.

“Do you see the others much?” she finally asks.

Sansa shrugs one shoulder. “Did you know Jon quit the Watch? He moved back a couple of months ago, got a place up in the hills,” she says, but that’s not an answer.

“And Bran and Rickon?”

Sansa tsks. “Brienne always says I can visit whenever I like, but I don’t know, they’re so young. I don’t know how to talk to them now.”

“Bran’s fourteen,” Arya says, but she knows what Sansa really means.

Bran was injured in a freak accident four years ago, falling out of a treehouse. His spinal cord was all fucked up, and she could never follow what the specialists were saying, but the gist is that he lost the ability to walk. At the time, Arya thought it was the worst thing that would ever happen to her family, but then Ned got brutally murdered in public, so clearly she was wrong. 

She tries not to underestimate what a bastard fate is anymore. Still, she’s got too much respect for Bran to pretend like his life isn’t significantly harder than hers was at that age. 

“I don’t know,” Sansa repeats after the silence has dragged too long. “It’s weird. Everything’s so fucking weird, lately.”

“Yeah.” 

Arya has thought a lot about what she would say to Sansa if she were being brutally honest, and a lot of it isn’t very nice. They are, they’ve both asserted several times, each other’s least-favourite sibling. But what Sansa’s done in the last year is a start, and she honestly approves. It’s weird to have something kind to say, but Arya thinks of her mother and knows she has to actually say it:

“You did the right thing, you know.” 

Sansa looks up, startled. “What?”

“With the Lannisters and Littlefinger. You tried to fulfill your contract. Dad would’ve appreciated it, he would have understood.” She pauses, decides she might as well say the whole thing. “Nobody blames you for what happened with Joffrey, you know.”

Sansa always had big ideas about honour and morals and all that other shit Arya’s never quite understood on the same level. She knows right from wrong, obviously, but her sister’s more of an idealist and she was hit hard by the discovery that the world’s full of monstrous people out to get her.  

She doesn’t say anything for a moment, and Arya suspects this is going to be one of those strange conversations they both pretend didn’t happen. Then she says, quietly, “Thank you, Arya.”

She’s right about everything being weird, too, but Arya’s got half a plan to fix that.  

#

“We’re playing a show next week,” Arya tells Jon over coffee. They’re in his neighbourhood Starbucks because Jon’s roommate has his girlfriend over at their place, and Arya likes Sam just fine but his girlfriend has a baby, and Arya draws a line at hanging out with babies. 

“We?” Jon says.

“Me and Sansa,” she says. “At the Godswood.”

It’s a bold choice, she knows, arranging a set at Dad’s old stomping grounds, but she’s never been particularly subtle. His eyebrows furrow in concern, but all he says is, “I thought Sansa wasn’t allowed to play.”

The greatest mistake of Sansa’s young life, aside from ever giving Joffrey Baratheon the time of day, was signing an ironclad contract with Petyr Baelish.

“She can perform,” Arya replies, “she just isn’t allowed to record, not until the hearing.”

She digs a crumpled flier out of her bag. It’s black-and-white because Arya paid for the printing, and they don’t have a band name, and the serifs are lightning bolts because that’s all Bran will draw lately, but it gets the job done. She slaps it down on the table in from of him.

“It’s next Thursday,” she says. “You should come.”

#  

Jon is only sort of her brother.  

There were always rumours about where he came from—the legend of Jon Snow, discovered outside the Winterfell tour bus in the dead of night. He and Robb are not quite ten months apart, and the idea that their father could ever be interested in anyone aside from her mother is insane to all of them, but it was also apparent that she’d not given birth to him. 

There was a time about ten years ago where his parentage was an actual, widely-debated issue. None of the Starks had died horribly, yet, so the tabloids had to be a little more creative with their headlines.

Ned, in his resolute manner, had steadfastly refused to talk about it. “Jon is my son,” was all he would say, which unfortunately spurred some longwinded tabloid rumours about who he possibly could have cheated on Catelyn with, in order to produce Jon. 

Catelyn and Jon had both the strangest relationship in the family and, in some ways, the least contentious. She always included him, treated him no different than the rest of her children when it was all of them together, but their personalities were so different that it was painful, sometimes, watching them try to communicate. Catelyn was hardest on Jon, could be cruel to him, didn’t speak to him for weeks when he dropped out of university. Sansa did the same thing four years later, and by then Cat only said, “You gave it a good try, and I’m proud of you for it.” 

“They fought about it, you know,” Bran once told her. It might’ve been during Ned’s funeral, the big media blitz that left Arya cold and angry and delirious, seething with rage. That whole week was just—she doesn’t remember most of it, but she remembers Bran, in his suit, in his chair, looking at his hands, and saying, “I heard them a few weeks ago. Mom wanted to tell Jon something, but Dad won’t let her.”

Love wasn’t a word that got thrown around a lot in the Stark household—it’s funny, people think musicians must be really easy-going about feelings, but Ned’s father had been in the military, a decorated general during the revolution, and Ned learned to be reserved and quiet about emotional subjects unless he had a guitar in his hands. Cat was more demonstrative, quicker to give praise but also to chastise; if she was disappointed with you, you knew it.

Arya thought, for years, that Catelyn was perpetually disappointed in Jon. Then at Ned’s funeral he sat beside her; the pew at the Sept wouldn’t fit them all together, not with Bran’s chair as well, so Cat sat in front with Jon on her left, Robb on her right, and when she went up to the pulpit she kept holding on to both of them. And when she started crying too hard to speak, Jon took the sheaf of papers from her hands and continued the eulogy, holding her hand the whole time, steadying them both.

Afterward, while they walked back down to their seats and the Septon spoke final prayers, Cat briskly wiped at her eyes and nodded at Jon, and Arya realized it wasn’t disappointment at all, it was just a sterner sort of love than the way she loved all the rest of her kids. 

#

Her parents are dead, her sister’s a shut-in former pop princess, her brothers need all kinds of therapy (particularly the one who’s not really her brother) and she’s crashing on the expensive leather couch in Sandor Clegane’s yuppie condo.

Everything else in here is made of lucite or stainless steel, and the first time she saw it she burst out laughing at the idea of Sandor—who is not quite the mountain his brother is, but who has the demeanour of an over-large, frequently kicked dog—living in a place so aggressively modern.

“Not everyone aspires to be a violent street urchin,” he snapped at her when she laughed at the decor. Then he told her to wipe her feet on the doormat before scuffing his floors. 

Sandor Clegane was the single scariest person Arya had ever met, right up until the moment she met his brother. Now, Gregor is a violent ex-con the size of a small mountain, fiercely devoted to Cersei Lannister (Queen Bitch from Hell), so he’s earned a permanent place on Arya’s kill list.

Sandor was on the list initially too, back when he was Joffrey Baratheon’s manager. That gig hadn’t worked out for him, since a) Joffrey had absolutely no musical talent, and b) “manager” in this context tended to mean “bailed Joffrey out of jail and tried to keep him from doing anything dangerously stupid,” which was a fruitless battle, because Joffrey’s aggressive shitlord behaviour escalated regularly until the breaking point when he went full psycho and stabbed Ned to death in front of twenty thousand people.

But, see, right after Joffrey stabbed Ned? Sandor swept onto the stage and tackled him. He’s generally regarded as the single reason Joffrey didn’t manage to kill or seriously injure Sansa during their explosive breakup, and he testified for the prosecution during Cersei’s trial and threw down some truly damning evidence. He sided with the Starks when it counted, and Arya respected that enough to cross his name off her list.

None of that explains precisely how he became Arya’s bodyguard, but that’s the world she lives in now. 

Sandor likes Arya and hates almost everyone else, so he’s a decent bodyguard. Not that she needs a bodyguard. She doesn’t get recognized much since she cut her hair short, and she tends to avoid eye contact, wear unassuming clothes. Sansa can barely leave the house without fans swarming her, but Arya’s better at staying incognito. So Sandor’s mostly Sansa’s bodyguard.

“You must stop saying that,” he objects. It’s six in the morning, and Arya’s still on Valyrian time so she thinks it’s the early afternoon. She’s not sure why Sandor’s up, except the vague suspicion that he’s trying to keep an eye on her.

“Why? You would literally kill anyone who tries to mess with her, you’ve said that a dozen times.”

“I would literally kill a lot of people if I felt like it, you included,” he says, shoving a plate of Eggo waffles at her across the breakfast bar. “Eat.”

“Yes, ser,” she smirks, and proceeds to inhale five waffles.

She really needs to work on finding her own place.

#

Jon shows up to their show at the Godswood, just like Arya knew he would. He also brings someone she definitely did not expect to see.

“No way,” Sansa says, looking up from tuning her ukulele to see Jon and Robb winding through the milling crowd. It’s not busy, per se, but the word’s gotten around about their set; it’s not busy yet, but it will be soon, she can feel it. 

“What are you doing here?” she says, launching herself from the stage down onto the sticky bar floor, approaching at a run.

“The Hound let us in,” Jon says, which means that he obviously told Sandor he was coming and her bodyguard is being shit at his job again. 

“I can’t believe you came,” she tells Robb, and he says,

“Of course I did. Do you think I’d miss my little sister’s triumphant return?” He says it with a grin, but he looks worried. That’s not new, Robb has a permanent expression of concern, just like their dad. 

Sansa follows at a more respectable pace, descending stage-right and embracing her brothers in a one-armed hug; Sansa’s the absolute worst at hugs.

“You’ve grown,” Robb tells Sansa, confusedly. 

Arya understands the feeling. Sansa is already a giraffe; she doesn’t need any extra height. 

“I’m wearing heels, stupid,” she says, shoving at his shoulder. 

#

They play a couple of Sansa’s original songs, one of Arya’s wordless, vaguely-psychedelic compositions which leave the crowd visibly uncomfortable and close with a couple of covers, Fleetwood Mac and the Stones.

Sansa’s got a weird affinity for “Sympathy for the Devil,” but it really highlights the scary murder expression she’s perfected over the last couple years, so Arya’s happy enough to play along. 

# 

Of course, she and Sansa get recognized; sometimes randomly, out on the street or in the shops, but then this isn’t King’s Landing, so people aren’t constantly watching for celebrities (or vaguely notable celebrity offspring, such as they are). It’s implicit at their shows though—everyone knows who the Stark sisters are because Ned was the most successful person in a five-hundred-mile radius. Even when his band made it big, even after their first four albums went platinum and continued success was assumed, he never moved away, still kept a house here full-time, raised his family here. 

“Your dad saved my life,” people tell Arya after her and Sansa’s shows. She’s heard this so much throughout her life, but now Ned’s not here for her to roll her eyes at about how crazy his diehard fans are. That was before he died, and before she really understood that music could be life-or-death.

“Losing Ned was a tragedy, I’m so sorry,” the fans tell her, and “My first concert was a Winterfell show,” and “you two must carry on, you know, your parents would be so proud.” 

She takes all these comments quietly, while Sansa actually engages with the speakers, mostly middle-aged men and women who hang around after their set to reminisce about Ned Stark and Catelyn Tully and the golden age of rock. Sansa’s always been better at putting up with bullshit. 

Arya prefers to load up their equipment into Sansa’s Jeep, or drink her beer backstage with a slice of terrible pizza alongside Jon, who comes to every show even though he says his solo stuff is keeping him busy.

#

Ned Stark was Winterfell; it couldn’t go on without him. The band had survived a half-dozen lineup changes, drummers and guitarists coming and going, Robert Baratheon breaking away twenty-five years ago to kick-start his uninspired sell-out solo career. 

“Fuck that guy,” Arya says, whenever his name comes up or she spies his face on the gaudy ‘80s Winterfell merchandise people gift her and Sansa. 

She can’t stand him, and not just for the obvious reason. Beyond the whole ‘his kid murdered Ned and his wife was a shew who completely destroyed Sansa’s sanity,’ Robert Baratheon was a bad performer: he took his fans for granted, did the Axl Rose show-up-three-hours-late-or-not-at-all thing. She can’t imagine how he and Ned were ever so close, but there are enough magazine articles and anecdotal stories to prove it. But Winterfell didn’t need Robert to continue, and they kept on making music once he left. Winterfell could survive without Robert, even though it meant the sound had to change. 

Changes are normal, change was expected. Winter is coming, right?

“The music has to evolve,” Ned told her once. She was eleven, maybe twelve, and deep in her metal phase. She’d tried to explain to him that she didn’t need her drums anymore, because she was going to be a bassist, and he’d gently told her that she wasn’t to give away any instruments. “The music will change because you change, and it’s yours, isn’t it?” he said. “That doesn’t mean it gets better or worse, only different. But hang on to the things that got you to where you are. You might need them, someday.”

The drums had gone up into the attic, and she’d spent the next year perfecting the bass Jon got her—she named it Needle, which Sansa laughed about, saying that she was being pretentious giving it a name. She was good on drums, better on bass, and she sang loud and clear when it suited her. 

Ned was right, though: the music always kept on changing, just when she thought she’d finally learned it by heart. 

#

They find her old drum kit when they go to clean out the house. It’s been mostly shut up for three years, trashed during the house party Robb’s idiot bandmate decided to throw after what turned out to be their very last performance, just before Robb quit music entirely.

Theon had managed to start a small fire in the living room, and although the worst of the damage had been repaired by—actually, Arya’s not sure who dealt with that, maybe Hodor or somebody. Anyway, the repair had overlapped with working out the details of Catelyn’s estate, and the lawyer meetings and custody stuff took precedence. None of them were living there at full-time, and once Catelyn died they stayed there even less.

They’d all just kind of—left it, really. 

Jon meets Arya at the house to pack it up on a bright clear Saturday at ten in the morning. Sansa shows up a half hour late, with Bran and Rickon in her Jeep.

Before Arya had gone away, Sansa drove a pink Prius.

“What, you staged a jailbreak without me?” Arya says in mock-offence, splitting into a grin when Rickon bursts out of the front seat and tackles her into a hug.

Sansa shrugs. “Seemed like they could use a visit.”

The while there’s still somewhere to visit went unsaid. The house was going up for sale next week. 

Uncle Benjen has nominal custody of Bran and Rickon, but he tours eight months of the year as a sound tech for the Brotherhood Without Banners, and despite being the fun uncle, he’s actually kind of quiet and melancholy and not somebody who knows how to handle adolescents day-to-day on his own. So while he’s on tour the boys mostly live with Brienne.

Brienne is a six-foot-tall blonde bombshell and is, in Sandor Celgane’s admiring words, “built like a brick shithouse.” His mistake had been saying it within earshot of Brienne's boyfriend, whats-his-name, the one-handed guy who still managed to land a punch on the Hound.

It’s unclear where Brienne came from. She was, apparently, a songwriter for some prog-rock band back in Tarth, then sang backup on Adele’s last album. She has a voice like an angel and a severe case of resting bitchface that Arya admires deeply. Somehow, she ended up touring with Catelyn, a kind of Jill-of-all-trades. Arya’s unsure what persuaded her to step away from music and become a full-time caretaker for two kids she’s not even related to, but she kind of suspects it was her loyalty to Catelyn that did it.

Robb shows up four hours later in his rust-bucket pickup, with Grey Wolf in the cab and Theon slumped in the passenger seat. Robb inherited the same psychological hang-up that Ned had about being a good provider, but he’s also pretty shit at all that domestic stuff, so he shows up with a huge bucket of KFC fried chicken, a plastic box of caesar salad, and a 2 litre of Pepsi in a carrier bag.

“Wow, so prepared,” Sansa says when he and Theon pass her in the porch. She’s wearing a crop-top that’s pretty much just a bra and Theon ogles her so obviously that Robb swats the back of his head.

#

Arya and Robb tackle Dad’s office, appraising the collection of instruments and deciding what needs to be repaired or serviced and what can be put into storage as-is. 

Sansa and Jon sort through the books in the library, deciding what to keep and what to sell. Theon hauls boxes down the stairs and stacks them in the hallway, etching the destination on the side in Sharpie (Jon’s apartment, or Sansa’s loft, or Robb’s townhouse, or the storage unit Arya’s renting until she figures out her shit). 

Bran is set up at the long farm table in the dining room, a comically small figure at the head of the table, with hundreds of documents spread out before him, sifting through the piles of nostalgic crap that Dad decided to keep (every newspaper clipping or magazine article ever written about the band, or Catelyn, or any of them, even the terrible tabloid fodder). He categorizes most of it into bankers boxes, and occasionally shreds the old shopping lists and scribbled notes he comes across.

Rickon helps with the shredding because it’s his favourite part of the whole endeavour. He also runs around the house and refills everybody’s water bottles when he needs a break from reading Arya’s old comic books on the living room carpet.   

Brienne picks the boys up after their dinner of mediocre pizza takeout, but the rest of them work late into the evening, determined to sort through the monumental piles of shit their parents have accumulated. It’s also a good opportunity to compare notes on the state of the family:

Hodor, Ned’s life-long roadie, has started coaching Rickon’s little league team. Bran is a certified genius and will be finished high-school by the time he turns fifteen, at this rate.

They’re both doing amazingly well, considering. But Arya can’t help but feel a little sad for them.

“Why do you say that?” Jon asks. They’re in the porch, finishing the leftover pizza. 

“Because they got even less time with Dad and Mom than we did. Rickon especially, I don’t think he even really remembers Dad. They never got to go to shows or sleepover on the bus or sell merch.”

“You never sold merch,” Sansa rejoins. 

“I did! The Night King Festival,” Arya sniffs. “I was thirteen and Dad put me in charge because Theon and Robb did mushrooms and were no use to anyone.”

Robb smiles, which judging by the horrified look on Sansa’s face is the wrong reaction to that statement, and the whole thing is so absurd that it sets Arya off giggling.

And that’s when Sam’s girlfriend, what’s her name, thumps down from the attic with a box of books in her arms and says, “Jon, I think you should read this.” 

It was Lyanna Stark’s tour diary, and it had all the answers Ned never divulged. 

#

And it’s funny, isn’t it, the things parents try to shield their children from? And if her aunt hadn’t already been long dead, Arya would have added her name to the list she kept crumbled in her jacket pocket.

What had they all put Jon through, for the sake of a stupid secret, an unknown father and dead mother.

#

“It’s not like any of us should really be surprised,” Sansa says, while the two of them walk down the drive toward the Jeep. “I mean, we knew he wasn’t really a Stark.”

It’s after midnight when they finally disperse, everyone piling into their cares. Arya had done the final sweep of the house, closed all the windows and locked the doors, and Sansa was waiting for her at the door when she emerged. Despite a good show of familial strength and determined not-talking-about-it, Arya isn’t surprised that Sansa’s doing this.

Arya crouches down on the drive, picks up a chunk of gravel, and lobs it at her. It’s only a small rock, a little bigger than a penny, but it hits the back of Sansa’s head dead-on and she whips around, furious.

“Did you just throw something at me?” she demands.

“That depends,” Arya says calmly, leaning down to pick up a larger rock. “Did you just try to evict Jon out of the family?” 

She throws it and misses, but only because Sansa ducks.  

Honestly, she should consider herself lucky that the Faceless Men mellowed Arya out so much; six months ago, she would’ve just punched her. 

#

She expects this news to derail their burgeoning familial truce, but instead, she’s surprised to find Jon at their next show, as if nothing had happened. Robb accompanies him again and even brings his surprise wife, which is equally unexpected. 

Talisa, it turns out, is in touch with Brienne, and promises to bring at least Bran to the next show, and Rickon too if she can manage it.

“We might not do another show,” Sansa objects. “We’re not really planning these.”

The next show takes four weeks to come together. In the interim, Arya makes some plans. 

# 

Jon’s been using the stage-name “Snow” since he was fourteen and deeply ingrained in his angsty emo phase, but it kind of works for him. His tenure with the Night’s Watch is ended, and he’s back to performing as Snow.

Last summer, he opened on tour for the Tallest Man on Earth and was so well-received that he scored a contract with some indie label out of the Reach, but his first album sales were underwhelming, and as admits to Arya, he hasn’t been writing lately. 

#

“This next one’s new,” Sansa tells the crowd, who applaud as expected. The Godswood is packed to the gills, probably more people than the fire code allows.

Sansa’s lipstick is black, not just dark red this time, actually black, matte and precise in a way that makes her teeth look neon white. She looks absolutely nothing like Cersei’s mirror-image protege. Arya approves wholeheartedly, in a way that she’s not used to approving of any of Sansa’s decisions. 

“It’s called ‘My Watch is Ended,’ and I think it’s actually pretty good.”

Arya says, “Pretty good?” skeptically, with a sidelong look. 

“Yes, Arya, it’s pretty good, considering that _I_ didn’t write it.”

Arya frowns, playing along. The audience fucking loves it, has come to expect this kind of weirdness from the Stark sisters and their sporadic pop-up shows all around town. This is, what, the fifth or sixth in three months? And the crowds keep growing.

“Well, I know _I_ didn’t write it either,” Arya says, “so _wherever_ did this new song come from?”

Sansa smirks into her microphone and tilts her head to the left, which is Jon’s cue. He enters stage-left and everyone _freaks the fuck out_. 

Holy shit, Arya never got this kind of reaction at any of her solo performances. That would sting, but she doesn’t think Jon has at any of his either. 

He stalks up behind her, guitar slung across his chest, and they deftly switch places on the small stage. He assumes her spot at the mic and raises it about two feet higher, then rumbles “Hello” into it and the cheering rises in another wave. 

Arya’s settled behind her drum kit and kicks off a slow tempo, just to get them started, as Jon starts singing. Sansa kicks in on backup vocals on the chorus, by the refrain the audience is singing along.

It’s good. It’s better than she expected, and she knew it would work, but this—it’s something else. They do another song afterword, one of Sansa’s originals, and then a cheesy ABBA cover for the hell of it, and it’s the same, she realizes, as practicing in the garage all those years ago, back when Robb would play bass and Bran would bang on a tambourine or whatever.

They’ve all changed, but they’re not as different as she feared, and this? 

And it's weird, it is, all the Stark kids backstage at the Godswood like it's five years ago. Only five years ago they were actual children, and had never been in a courtroom or a morgue or the nightly headline news.   

Arya, in a burst of rare enthusiasm, says “We could do this.”

“We are doing it,” Sansa tells her, like she’s incomprehensibly stupid. 

“No, but we could actually do this. For real. Make a record, even.”

Sansa squints. “Are you being serious?”

#   

They do a two-night engagement at a venue near Eastwatch by the sea over the holiday long weekend—Robb can’t make it until the second night, he’s got an exam on Friday afternoon, but he gives Jon his truck and they drive up in three little groups: Jon and Arya and Samwell in the pickup, Sansa and Bran in the Jeep, and Theon driving the van with all the gear alone, because he owes Robb a favour. 

Arya’s not sure how Sansa convinced Brienne that Bran should be allowed to come, but she’s glad. Bran never got to hang around backstage at Lollapalooza or man the merch booth at Coachella, and this is a poor replacement, but they called ahead to make sure the Keep is accessible. 

“Hey, did Jon tell you?” Samwell asks her while they’re stopped for fuel; Jon’s inside the gas station, buying her a Coca-Cola. Sam’s speaking with an air of urgency she wasn’t expecting; she’s vaguely worried this is going to be gossip, and she’s never been very good at gossip.

“Tell me what?”

“Why he’s been too busy to write much.”

That gets her attention. “No, why?”

“He’s got a girlfriend in Essos,” Sam says knowingly. “Met her on the Internet.”

“ _What?_ ”

“Don’t tell him I said anything,” Sam says quickly, just as Jon exits the station and crosses the parking lot toward them, wind tangling his hair. He really does need to cut it.

“You’ve got an Internet girlfriend?” Arya asks immediately. 

Jon freezes in place, then swivels round to glare at Sam, who only whines _“I’m not good at secrets”_ kind of pathetically as if that’s any kind of excuse. 

The rest of the drive is considerably livelier, though Jon refuses to tell her anything about Dany except that she’s beautiful and amazing, which, frankly, is not a lot of information. Jon thought that about his last girlfriend too, and he met Ygritte when she nearly killed him in a bar fight. He’s not a great judge of character. 

#  

The setlist, when they finally agree on it, is a mix of originals and covers.

The close the first night with  _Lady Macbeth_ off Sansa’s first album, because of all their individual work it’s gotten the most airplay. But that’s not quite right, and on Sunday night they reconsider. 

“We should do a Winterfell song,” Arya says.

They all go quiet, thoughtful. There are a handful of likely choices.

Winter is Coming is the best-known Winterfell song, their certified platinum hit, but it’s too iconic: everybody will expect them to play that one, which is exactly why they just can’t. Maybe they will one day, but not for their first show. Bear and the Maiden Fair has been covered to death, from Coldplay’s instrumental version to A$AP Rocky’s remix, so that’s out. Catelyn is upbeat enough to serve as a showstopper, but Sansa vetoes it because she knows she’ll start crying.

“ _King in the North_ ,” Bran says, finally. “You have to do it.”

Robb is the decider since it’s technically his song, Ned Stark’s gift to his newborn son that went multi-platinum. 

“We’ll do Sansa’s version,” he says, “with the faster backbeat, but Jon should sing.”

That throws them all off. 

Theon says, “But he’s not even—“ and when Robb quells him with a sharp look, amends to “he’s not even here yet.”

“He’s sleeping still, he was up all night writing.”

Writing emails to his internet girlfriend, probably.

“Jon has to sing it,” Robb repeats, steady, and this is what reminds them all of Ned: sometimes, Robb says things, and you have no choice but to believe him.  

Sansa chews her lip. “He’ll refuse, you know he will.”

Arya says, “Put it on the setlist. I’ll talk to him.”

#

Jon agrees to sing it, but he insists that Robb join them on stage.

“Some Winterfell songs make sense as acoustics,” he says. “This isn’t one of them. We need a whole set to do it justice. You play bass, and I’ll do it.”

Robb caves easily, but it’s not until Arya sees the video Bran recorded that she realizes how glad he was to do it.

He’s not smiling, nothing in his expression suggests joy. But the focused expression, the slight set of his jaw and the seamless way he melds in with all of them—and it had been how long since he’s played? 

She’d never judged his decision to leave music; God knows Westeros needs more doctors than bassists. But she wonders if he considered what he was giving up.

#

“We should get Bran up on stage next time, too,” Arya suggests.

“Bran can sing,” Robb adds. 

“Yeah, but can he play bass?” Sansa quips back. It's meant as a kill shot, to destroy this mad plan of Arya's. “You're not going to be at every show, we'll need a bassist.”

But then Bran says, defiantly, “I could learn.”

And, well: that could work. 

#

Tyrion Lannister convinces Arya to sign with his label by saying “I’m not on speaking terms with my deranged shrew of a sister, but I promise, your family aligning with me will push her ever closer to self-consuming madness.”

Sounds good to Arya. She signs and walks out of his office with a tote bag full of Imp Records swag, planning to hawk it all on eBay for beer money.

Sansa and Robb are a harder sell, though Jon agrees easily enough. He and Tyrion crossed paths once before, on a Night’s Watch Tour that took them north of the Wall, and ever since Jon has had a kind of bemused appreciation of Tyrion. He claims he once saw him take a piss off the roof of a high-rise hotel in the freezing cold, just for the hell of it, which is the kind of thing that could either infuriate or impress Jon, depending on his mood.

Sansa dislikes Tyrion solely based on the Lannister connection, though she warms towards him once he offhand mentions having testified in court against every member of his immediate family.

# 

Joffrey Baratheon is going to rot in jail until he dies. 

The Crownlands abolished the death penalty decades ago, and he was barely twenty when he murdered Ned (the defence attorney Cersei hired attempted to get him tried as a minor, in addition to the failed insanity plea; it hadn’t worked either). Life in prison was the best they could hope for, and with any luck it’ll be a long, miserable life. He’s getting what he deserves, and many would say that this is a better punishment, that death would be too merciful. He’s still on Arya’s murder list.

“That’s so morbid,” Robb tells her. She hasn’t actually explained the list; he'd gone snooping through her backpack after sound-check. "Have you thought about going back to therapy?”

She did, for a week. Her therapist told her it wasn’t healthy to cope by focusing solely on her music; she told her therapist that was how her parents dealt with their traumas, so it was good enough for her. 

“Arya, are you really going to kill someone?”

She could lie, say something comforting, but why bother? 

She shrugs, because it’s a little unclear even to her. She’s not active planning anything, but if she runs into Cersei Lannister on the street—well. 

#

“We need a name,” Sansa says. 

All of them give her shit for saying things like  _we need to leave twenty minutes early to beat traffic_  or  _what are we all going to wear_  or  _Arya, when did you last see a dentist,_ but the truth is that she is the primary reason they make it to gigs on time, show up dressed in vaguely co-ordinated outfits, and that Arya still has all of her teeth. So when Sansa says we need a name, they all simmer down and think on it. 

“We can’t keep being ‘Sansa and Arya’ if it’s always going to be all of us, that’s absurd,” Sansa insists.

“No one is saying we should,” Jon snipes back. 

“Winterfell 2.0,” Theon suggests. 

Arya honestly doesn’t know why they keep Theon around.

“No,” says Sansa, tilting her head at him in a way that suggests he’s a fucking idiot. 

They end up doing their next show under the name “The Starks,” because that’s what Brienne tells the venue when the booker calls, but they all hate it and convene backstage while Theon and Sam and Gilly load away the equipment, because if they’re going to do this, then they have to do it right.

“Sansa’s lead singer,” Arya says, in a rare show of allegiance, “she should get veto power.”

You’d think being the only two sisters in a family of boys would have drawn them closer together, but Arya has always been closer to Jon (who never treated her like a girl) and Robb (who treated her a bit like a girl, but not as if being a girl meant she couldn’t still  _do_  things) than she was to Sansa. This naturally means that siding with Sansa carries a bit more weight than when she automatically backs up Jon or Robb.

“What we need is something that references mom and dad but isn’t too gimmicky. We could use a song title?”

“Oh,” Samwell interrupts. “I’ve got it, the throne!”

The Iron Throne was a recurring motif on the second and third Winterfell albums. According to Ned it symbolized, variously: money, success, power, solitude, ruin, love, anger, death and the afterlife. They stopped referencing it on the sixth album because, in his own words, “it doesn’t mean anything anymore, and I haven’t decided what it’ll mean next.”

“That’s it,” Robb says. “The Iron Throne. Is that it?”

“No, it’s too short,” Arya objects, though she likes the general direction of the name. “And we don’t want people to think we’re just a cover band.”

“Wait, wait. Listen: Sansa Stark,” Sandor suggests from his place by the door, chuckling slightly, like this name is so ludicrous he even can’t believe he’s saying it, “Sansa Stark and the Iron Throne.”

#

“Give it up,” the announcer bellows over the loudspeakers as the lights come up on the stage, “for Sansa Stark and the Iron Throne!” 

#

Petyr Baelish overdoses in a brothel in King’s Landing three weeks later. 

“That motherfucker,” Robb says.

Sansa says levelly, “Given his weird obsession with Mom, I really think we should all stop using that word.”

Gross. 

Arya says, “Anyway, this is good news, isn't it? You can make your album now, sure even he can't manage bad press from beyond the grave.”

Sansa smiles that vampire smile of hers, enigmatic and a bit scary, and orders another round for the table.

#

The tour is Tyrion’s idea. This means that it’s either a) completely brilliant and an amazing plan destined for success, or b) inexorably stupid. Tyrion has about a 60% success rate.

Arya says, “All right.”

Sansa says, “Oh, maybe,” which is more enthusiasm than Arya expected.

Jon says no, and also that’s a terrible idea, but only protests a little when Sam and Arya start packing his stuff for him. 

Robb laughs, says with an edge of panic in his voice, “I can’t go on tour.” 

“Why not? You’ll be done school by the spring, we’ll go after.”

He looks at her like she’s speaking Braavosi. “I have responsibilities. I’m married—“

“Bring her,” Sansa says, without looking up from her phone. 

“What,” Robb says. 

“Bring Talisa on tour. What’s the big deal? It’s only a few weeks.” 

This is technically true, though Arya and Tyrion have already agreed that if ticket sales are strong they’re going to expand the dates to the rest of the seven kingdoms. Sansa must have an inkling because her lips twist like she’s trying not to say more. 

# 

Arya packs her backpack and a small duffel because she doesn’t need much and she can always borrow from Sansa or her brothers if she needs extra clothes. 

Jon moves out of his apartment (Gilly moves in).

Sandor gives Arya a shove out his front door, with a joking smile, and then spends forty minutes talking to Sansa, and they're both so oblivious it makes Arya a little sad even though she doesn't get any of what's going on there.

Uncle Benjen gets the estate to sign off on Bran's legal emancipation, which means he's allowed to come along the tour. Rickon cries for days, though Brienne promises that they'll meet the rest of them at Sunspear for the last show. Rickon's never been to the beach before, and that calms him down a bit. 

Robb finishes out the semester, and the morning after his final exam they all pile into the tour bus. 

“This is a terrible idea,” Sansa says from behind her huge sunglasses. 

It’s five in the morning. They’ve been on the King’s Road Highway for twelve minutes, and Arya thinks that if she wanted to back out, she should’ve done it before they hit the highway. 

“Yes,” Tyrion says, amused, “but isn’t everything, at first?”

“No.” She says it like, no, you idiot, obviously not.

“Hmm,” he says. “Well, it is in my experience. I’ve never had a good idea actually begin as a good idea. They're all outlandish schemes, to start with.”

This might end very badly.  

#

The days blur together along with the cities. 

Moat Cailin to White Harbour to Crossroads Inn to Harrenhal seems to happen in the blink of an eye. Their trio of gigs in and around King's Landing takes longer; Arya can't help it, she hates this place. But soon enough they're on the road to Bitterbridge, and she can breathe easier.

At night, the bus rumbles along the King's Road, and tucked up in her bunk she sleeps straight through until they're in the Reach and sunrise breaks over the mountains. It's the best she's slept in years. 

#

Jon’s “girlfriend in Meereen” turns out to be real, and also an intensely terrifying super-babe. The first time they all see Daenerys Targaryen, she’s on stage at Coachella just outside of Highgarden, opening for Halsey, which is probably a great career move but makes Arya want to vomit a little bit. She’s screaming into a microphone in Dothraki, and the crowd adores her. 

“I’m in love,” Arya tells Robb, who settles his hand in her shoulder and gives her a gentle shake, which could mean he’s suppressing laughter or he’s genuinely warning her not to seduce Jon’s girlfriend. She’s still kind of considering it. 

 #

They board a boat to Sunspear because the beach road is washed out, and Jon says to her, “Why’d you come back, Arya? Robb was sure you’d end up joining a cult in Valyria and never return.”

He says it with humour, with a grin that reminds her of Ned, but he’s not joking. 

She almost lies, but what would the point be? It’s Jon, he’d know. 

“I’m still mad,” she admits. “I was going to keep going until I wasn’t mad anymore, but I don’t think it works like that. I think I’m going to be mad forever, and I ought to do something with it. That’s what Dad would do.”

Later—like, months later, when the album is climbing the charts and Tyrion has started predicting Grammy nominations, when Robb has started his residency and Bran has started covering for him on bass during live shows, when she finally works up the nerve to call the busker from Yunkai (he says his name is Gendry, and he calls Arya’s mobile incessantly and sometimes emails or writes actual paper letters to keep in touch)—later, Arya will realize she was wrong. Ned would’ve let go of his anger, somehow; he would have found a way to set it down and walk away, even if that meant keeping the hot coal of rage within sight at all times.

She can do that, too. She’s at least willing to try.

**Author's Note:**

> I went to a show and I never go to shows and this is the result. Shout out to The Beaches, who are young and charismatic and seemed vaguely angry, which instantly reminded me of Sansa and Arya. 
> 
> (Title cribbed from Neil Young, obviously).


End file.
